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In answer: It must, first, be noted that there are a variety
of modes in which an object may be said to be present to another
or to exist in another. There is a "presence" which acts by
changing the object- for good or for ill- as we see in the case
of bodies, especially where there is life. But there is also a
"presence" which acts, towards good or ill, with no modification
of the object, as we have indicated in the case of the Soul. Then
there is the case represented by the stamping of a design upon
wax, where the "presence" of the added pattern causes no
modification in the substance nor does its obliteration diminish
it. And there is the example of Light whose presence does not
even bring change of pattern to the object illuminated. A stone
becoming cold does not change its nature in the process; it
remains the stone it was. A drawing does not cease to be a
drawing for being coloured.
The intermediary mass on which these surface changes appear is
certainly not transmuted by them; but might there not be a
modification of the underlying Matter?
No: it is impossible to think of Matter being modified by, for
instance, colour- for, of course we must not talk of modification
when there is no more than a presence, or at most a presenting of
shape.
Mirrors and transparent objects, even more, offer a close
parallel; they are quite unaffected by what is seen in or through
them: material things are reflections, and the Matter on which
they appear is further from being affected than is a mirror. Heat
and cold are present in Matter, but the Matter itself suffers no
change of temperature: growing hot and growing cold have to do
only with quality; a quality enters and brings the impassible
Substance under a new state- though, by the way, research into
nature may show that cold is nothing positive but an absence, a
mere negation. The qualities come together into Matter, but in
most cases they can have no action upon each other; certainly
there can be none between those of unlike scope: what effect, for
example, could fragrance have on sweetness or the colour-quality
on the quality of form, any quality on another of some unrelated
order? The illustration of the mirror may well indicate to us
that a given substratum may contain something quite distinct from
itself- even something standing to it as a direct contrary- and
yet remain entirely unaffected by what is thus present to it or
merged into it.
A thing can be hurt only by something related to it, and
similarly things are not changed or modified by any chance
presence: modification comes by contrary acting upon contrary;
things merely different leave each other as they were. Such
modification by a direct contrary can obviously not occur in an
order of things to which there is no contrary: Matter, therefore
[the mere absence of Reality] cannot be modified: any
modification that takes place can occur only in some compound of
Matter and reality, or, speaking generally, in some agglomeration
of actual things. The Matter itself- isolated, quite apart from
all else, utterly simplex- must remain immune, untouched in the
midst of all the interacting agencies; just as when people fight
within their four walls, the house and the air in it remain
without part in the turmoil.
We may take it, then, that while all the qualities and entities
that appear upon Matter group to produce each the effect
belonging to its nature, yet Matter itself remains immune, even
more definitely immune than any of those qualities entering into
it which, not being contraries, are not affected by each other.
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